by Manish Jain and Bob Stilger, 2007

I believe that we are at the point now in the United States where a movement is beginning to emerge. I think that the calamity, the quagmire of the Iraq war, the outsourcing of jobs, the drop-out of young people from the education system, the monstrous growth of the prison-industrial complex, the planetary emergency in which we are engulfed at the present moment, is demanding that instead of just complaining about these things, instead of just protesting about these things, we begin to look for and hope for another way of living…

I see a movement beginning to emerge because I see hope beginning to trump despair. I see the signs in the various small groups that are emerging all over the place to try and regain our humanity in very practical ways.

With these words, Grace Lee Boggs, a 91-year-old activist speaking in recent interview with PBS’s Bill Moyers, described a movement that we call the Now Activism. This is the activism of today, of right now, and it shows up as people everywhere are stepping forward with the leadership they have to offer to make a difference in their communities and organizations. Writer Paul Hawken also explores this new movement in his most recent book, Blessed Unrest:

I sought a name for the movement, but none exists. I met people who wanted to structure or organize it—a difficult task, since it would easily be the most complex association of human beings ever assembled. Many outside the movement critique it as powerless, but that assessment does not stop its growth.

We noticed this new movement as many friends from different parts of the planet began to ask similar questions: What new kinds of activism are required to face the crisis that threatens us today? What are the roots of this crisis? What gives us hope?

At Berkana, this movement reveals itself through the Berkana Exchange, a community of learning centers where people gather to develop their capacity as leaders of community change. In May 2007, nearly 50 people from 14 countries convened in Greece at the newest learning center for our annual Art of Learning Centering. We explored our identity as changemakers, our choices about language, the similarities and differences in our practices. We knew we recognized each other; how to name this recognition was elusive.

In support of this challenge of naming the movement, Shikshantar, one of the founding learning centers of the Berkana Exchange, took the lead in assembling a collection of more than 50 stories and essays which explore this Now Activism. Publication of this booklet comes as we begin the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Hind Swaraj, written by M.K. Gandhi in 1909. At its release, and still today, Hind Swaraj represented a significant effort to reorient the fundamental direction of the Indian freedom struggle. It offered to Indians and to the world a unique analysis of the crisis in India as a civilizational crisis, and it also suggested the deeper purpose behind the struggle to be free of British rule and institutionalization.

by Claudia Horwitz and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, 2006

There is a new culture of activism taking form in the world–a new paradigm for how we work, how we define success, how we integrate the fullness of who we are and what we know into the struggle for justice. Activists are being asked to examine our current historical moment with real intimacy, with fresh eyes, fire, and compassion. Many of the once-groundbreaking methods we know and use have now begun to rot. Many of our tactics are now more than simply ineffective- they are dangerous.

For agents of change, and all those who we work with, the detriment is twofold. We are killing ourselves and we are not winning. A life of constant conflict and isolation from the mainstream can be exhausting and demoralizing. Many of our work habits are unhealthy and unsustainable over the long haul. The structures of power have become largely resistant to our tactics. Given the intensity of our current historical circumstance it would be easy for us to rely on what we know, to fall back upon our conditioning and our historical tendencies, in our efforts to create change under pressure. Many lessons of the past carry wisdom; others are products and proponents of dysfunctional systems and ways of being in the world. A new paradigm requires a complex relationship with history; we must remember and learn from the past, but we cannot romanticize it.

Neither do we presume that the answer lies only in the new, the innovative, and the experimental. We carry the hearts and minds of the ancient ones of many traditions, across time and continents, while also connecting to the resources that surround us. Our intention is to survive and flourish in the landscape that we find ourselves living in. A new philosophy and practice of social change is emerging, one that grows out of an ethic of sustainability, spirituality, and a broader understanding of freedom. We are weaving old threads together in new forms and new ways of being.

spiritual activism and liberation spirituality

At its best, this new paradigm, which some of us are calling “spiritual activism” or “liberation spirituality” is revolutionary. It provides us with deepened competencies and tools to go forward in this tangle of conditions history has prepared for us and to assume the roles we’re being asked to play. While the field growing up around this new paradigm is varied and vast, we are beginning to see each other and understand what we share:

a deep commitment to spiritual life and practice;

a framework of applied liberation;

an orientation towards movement-building; and

a desire for fundamental change in the world based on equity and justice.

We are moving toward a doing that grows more deliberately out of being; an understanding that freedom from external systems of oppression is dynamically related to liberation from our internal mechanisms of suffering. It provides us with a way to release the construct of “us versus them” and live into the web of relationship that links all. Instead of being limited by the reactions of fight or flight, we encounter a path that finds fullness in presence. The humility of not-knowing allows truth to appear where fear once trapped us. We recognize the pervasive beauty of paradox, the dynamic tension between two simultaneous truths that seem contradictory. We enlarge our capacity to hold contradictions and to be informed by them. And our movements for change are transformed as a result.

swimming in the dominant culture

The culture of activism in the United State is like a fish swimming in murky waters. It lives and breathes in the dominant culture and it is greatly impacted by its nature. Even as we are attempting to change this culture, we easily overlook how it has impacted us and how we recreate it. As we begin to understand and reckon with these attributes, we start to unravel their influence. Like anything, the more we invite and allow ourselves to notice and name what is, the more space, opportunity and permission conditions have to change.